Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

tonymurphylee The first film in the Paul Morrissey trilogy, Flesh, tells the story of a male hustler Joe who lives with his lesbian wife Geri. Joe also has a son, whom we see Joe feeding a muffin to very early on in the film. Geri, in the opening scenes of the film, forces Joe out onto the streets so that he can obtain money to pay for her girlfriend's abortion. The film details the various deformed, twisted, perverted, and addicted people that he is forced to deal with (and sleep with) on a daily basis. In the end, Joe is left feeling drained, warped, and vulnerable to every perversion, and the audience is forced to confront the provocative nature of what it is truly like to be comfortable and happy in one's own flesh.This film is a revelation, and I think it's one of the best and most emotionally raw films of the 60s. It has nothing to do with the quality of the film itself, but rather the imagery it summons and the way it presents itself. This is not a good quality film for those who are just looking for a film to watch. This is the sort of film that you need to allow yourself to be emotionally invested in before you make any calls on what it is. To be frank, it's very tough to describe what the film is exactly. It's a very unorthodox film. As a matter of fact, the subject matter of the film, the camera-work, the performances, and the dialogue in this film are all very unorthodox. This film wasn't intended to exactly be viewed as a film, but rather to bring about a world that the audience can witness and get involved with in an emotional sense. I thought that, despite the crap quality, Morrissey was seriously onto something here. As a film, it obviously isn't that good, but as an exploration of sexuality and of emotional disconnection, it's a serious pleasure to watch. It is funny, unusual, sad, and incredibly sweet. It's probably the most erotic film about hustling I have seen, as well as the most tastefully innocent.I have neglected to highlight what helps the film really come together. That is Joe Dallesandro. This man has a body unlike anything I have ever seen, and a face of completely unpardonable beauty. What makes this film so deeply frightening in a way is his naive and gentle nature, and as a result we don't feel any internal fear from looking at the images but rather a sense of helpless fear. When you watch the film it becomes more and more clear that Joe has lost whatever wisdom and whatever ideas of security he has, and yet he has changed as a man because of it. If anything it has allowed him to revert to a state of abused self-confidence that really make what happens to him over the course of the film a lot more interesting. Joe Dallesandro is naked throughout about 80% of the film, but this obviously isn't done to titillate or to be shocking or risqué, but rather for the viewer to drop whatever preconceptions they have about seeing the male body and just accept it as part of the character's personal self doubts being put out and left in the open. The viewer no longer feels like a voyeur, and instead feels closer to the subject of the film. This is one of the least brave things that the film does, and yet when it ends it is the one thing that I thought about the most. This film likely has more male nudity in it than any other film ever made, and yet it's impossible to feel dirty or perverted as a result. Instead, we feel rather taken aback by the style and editing of the film(or the lack thereof), which is strictly amateur and impossibly inept. This is how we come into the film, and it is because of Joe Dallesandro that we leave the picture feeling that we didn't just watch what was merely a film made by a bunch of yuppies, nerds, and junkies.Ultimately, the film is definitely not for everyone. It will be impossible for some folks to accept the fact that the film is as poor quality and as badly made as it is. It will also be impossible for many folks to appreciate the fact that someone as seemingly sweet as Joe Dallesandro is so fearless and so ready and eager to completely put himself into constant vulnerable positions, both emotionally and physically. Flesh is STRICTLY for people who have a desire to be emotionally and visually involved in a film that digs into the darker and more repulsive aspects of the streets of New York, and refuses to place any sort of judgment. Forget that the film is about a miserable man who prefers to use himself endless to further add to the desecration of the lives of the people around him and concentrate on the humorous, horrible, and varied imagery. This film doesn't have much to say, but damn does it leave you feeling raw. Very few films have this much honesty in their imagery, and even fewer of them are nonjudgmental.

Polaris_DiB Flesh is about a bisexual prostitute who spends a day trying to make enough money to pay for his wife's girlfriend's abortion. It's cheaply shot, cheaply edited, and cheaply produced, so some extra attention has to paid to the dialog because sometimes it's a little difficult to hear, though the imagery is straight-forward enough. The actor who plays Joe spends about half of the screen-time completely naked (and yes, Morrissey doesn't shy away from showing everything), and basically through a series of scenes and conversations in the streets and cheap apartments of New York you get a pretty interesting though somewhat dragged-out portrait of the sexual underground, populated entirely by passive, unintellectual people who live John to John and are ultimately unable to even think about what they'll need in the future. Though the acting is poor (and made worse by the editing, which cuts off some of the dialog in parts), there's a sense of realism here that goes beyond the likes of Midnight Cowboy and Dog Day Afternoon, more mainstream movies that can use the crisp production values and stronger acting as a sense of removal and distance between the subject and the audience ("after all, it's just a movie"). The dialog, in its meandering and mumbling glory, is actually really well written, making it a shame that it's so poorly delivered because it really does provide a gateway into understanding these characters. In the end, though, if this movie doesn't shock you it might not be that effective otherwise, because it is, after all, a story about bored people with no motivation.--PolarisDiB

MARIO GAUCI I guess only a selected number of audience members really had any interest in watching how a male hustler in New York operates but I'd be willing to bet that even these brave souls were turned off by the irritating patchwork technique and deliberately muffled sound recording on display here; the fact that these inherent 'defects' were a direct result of the film's low-budget/underground/experimental nature is, I'd say, beside the point. Anyway, for those so inclined, the film features extensive male nudity and Joe Dallesandro, understandably, became an underground – and gay – icon! The episodic structure showing the day-to-day routine of the hustler protagonist offers a couple of mildly interesting scenes: his meeting with (and eventually posing for) an eccentric elderly artist; the one where Dallesandro expresses his views on his unusual line of work and delineates his particular modus operandi to a couple of prospective 'colleagues' including perhaps the unlikeliest of hustlers – a bespectacled nerd! Perhaps mercifully, the film ran for only 89 minutes against the IMDb's claim that its complete length is 105 (but the latter could well be a mistake)! I had watched a few other of Warhol's 'movies' and this one is decidedly not as satisfying as the most tolerable example I've run into yet, BAD (1977), and only slightly better than the likes of MY HUSTLER (1965) which were mostly a strain to sit through. The fact that this was only the first part of a trilogy did not augur well but, as the saying goes, you gotta to do what you gotta do and the other two 'chapters' had to follow in quick succession... Despite my generally negative reaction to it, FLESH is nevertheless still valuable as a 1960s time capsule and as a prototype of the Underground scene of that era, both cinematically and in real life. For the record, an image of Dallesandro from this film adorns the sleeve of The Smiths' self-titled 1984 debut album and transsexual Candy Darling (who appears here rather unremarkably) was immortalized in "Candy Says", the opening track of The Velvet Underground's eponymous 1969 album. Although the latter band is my all-time favorite, and one of the reasons for this is that, through their sheerly unique and ground-breaking music, they described a lifestyle so utterly different from my own, this is truly a case where I'd much rather experience something aurally instead of visually!

desperateliving One of the most sublime of American masterpieces, Morrissey opens the film by sexualizing Dallesandro, with his open mouth snoring on a pillow. We wonder, is he coming off a heroin high? We just see his face, then, flash, his body, flash, his naked rear. I can't think of another film that used this flash-blip form of editing so well to create a hypnotic, druggy mood, an editing method that works wonderfully as both pacing and style. After that introduction, when Dallesandro opens his mouth, his accent is jarring -- we expect him to be some kind of soft-spoken androgyne; instead, he's got the voice of a street thug -- Morrissey isn't comfortable letting our assumptions go unchecked. The lengthy opening is very sexy and playful -- it's a combination of martial troubles, Dallesandro's fascinating lip-rubbing kisses, and early morning sexual escapades; it all kind of flows together, if not always smoothly, then emotionally realistically.What I got from this was the same as what I got from "The 400 Blows" when I first saw it -- this is like a 20-something continuation of that story. There's a sense of camaraderie between the flesh sellers and the buyers; when Dallesandro walks the street looking for men (to fund his wife's abortion) there's the feeling of a secret handshake as boys make deals with each other. I never found it boring, though nothing happens -- nothing happens brilliantly, the boys hanging around, as they do, waiting for tricks. The main trick that Dallesandro finds is fascinating to watch, using Greek descriptions and only touching his back, a form of aesthetic body worship on the man's part. It's also dreadfully funny ("I'm not talking to an empty bed, am I?"). It's one of the most revealing scenes in the movie -- in any movie, I think; certainly any movie dealing with sex and sex for sale. When Dallesandro's eyes seem red and swollen, we can't tell if it's because he's drunk, ashamed, embarrassed, or all.The conversations in the film are cut-up -- they don't matter. (The film is silent in a few scenes, some of the most poignant and beautiful you may ever experience.) Yet when Morrissey chooses to include one, the way he includes it (we sort of piece it together), it's startling, such as one conversation between Dallesandro and a newbie hustler -- and neither of them ever mentioning the word "gay" or "hustler." What follows is a scene where we listen to a pair of transvestites as Dallesandro gets serviced -- this just after explaining to the newbie "getting used" to the job.Dallesandro is a subject worthy of the attention paid to him, both by his clients and Morrissey. He's less than effective as an actor, in the sense of acting as performing, but as far as revealing something he's incredible -- he's someone we immediately want to feel above, yet we go through his experiences, with all their complexities, and we're forced to try and know him. He's the kind of blank slate that we're drawn to but can't get a hold on. And of course he's incredibly striking -- forgetting everything else, this is partially a testament to the beauty of the male body, Dallesandro's gorgeous torso and permanently erect nipples.The movie has one devastating scene, but like everything else you can't really master it -- a girl says that she's been raped, and her only self-defense is in saying that, had the rapist only asked for sex, wooed her, he would have gotten a better lay. It's shattering. The movie has feeling for everyone, but even better than that, it's not merely sympathetic, it actually attempts to help us understand human beings -- and without ever dictating what it is we're meant to be understanding. It neither looks down on nor glamorizes the people within the film. It feels inclusive when we see Joe's arm around a transvestite. When he reads a letter (he talks about not getting past grade eight at one point), he's utterly charming, as he pauses on a word...then says, "woteva," and continues.You can learn something more profound from the interaction between Dallesandro and one of his clients in terms of gay-straight relationships than you can from any case study. Here we have the young boy who smiles (his top lip disappears as he does so) when a 30-something gym bunny Korean war veteran runs his fingers through his hair; it's a scene that feels very profound, this adult man sharing something with a younger version of himself -- it's not two gay men together, or a gay man paying a straight man, it's something else you can't put your finger on; questions of sexuality are beside the point. (Never before has popping a pimple seemed as affectionate.) After sharing something with each other emotionally (though with Dallesandro, since he's there for money, it's never apparent why he's there; though he's never less than sincere, which may be his most disarming quality), "So...can you help me out?" The man says sure. "I don't mean my pants!" 10/10